Oops, I read this thread ages ago and had March stuck in my head as when "all the things happen". My bad.
sounds like a good time to do a survey! What I did was long onto every EQ server and observed the general population and checked how many traders were up. While this wont give an overall population number of course as not everyone is in general, I would say the percentage who do not join is fairly consistent across servers so still is a valid way to compare. one other thing I have noticed though is full general chat channels seem to be funky now, used to be a hard limit of 400 but I have seen as many as 500 in a general chat, and while I may get plunked into a general chat (1) there is no way for me to know if there is also an open general chat (2) .. or (30)! So for servers with more then one or two general chats open I have just marked them as having 400+ or 800+ online. Survey was taken at 1 pm Pacific time on Saturday May 22nd. Ok here is the list starting with normal severs Firiona Vie 800+ and 449 Traders Tunare 400+ and 168 Traders Xegony 397 and 194 Traders Drinal 394 and 161 Traders Antonius 391 and 153 Traders Bertoxxulous 391 and 206 Traders Cazic Thule 387 and 181 Traders The Rathe 372 and 145 Traders Vox 367 and 57 Traders Erollisi Marr 361 and 136 Traders Luclin 357 and 141 Traders Bristlebane 336 and 285 Traders Povar 336 and 148 Traders Zek 72 and 18 Traders TLP and other special server Aradune 800+ and 586 Traders Rizlona 400+ and 125 Traders Mangler 396 and 267 Traders Ragefire 178 and 35 Traders Agnarr 144 and 81 Traders Coirnav 89 and 27 Traders Phinigel 62 and 16 Traders Miragul 43 and 1 Trader Selo 26 and 2 Traders
if you log into gen chat, you also don't know if there is a general1. I have seen evenings on Cazic with a Gen2 even a few times..
You can /join general1, general2 as well as general manually On some servers some clown has password protected them though - and they should not be able to be password protected at all to begin with.
Well, I have made it a point to turn off /autojoin on every character I've ever played for as long as I can recall. I never ever join any general channel and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one
I used to but was in General tonight and it was silent for almost 2 hours. People on Povar just use it to give away rots or taunt Portly.
It might not be the case here, but the chat channels can be fickle (in a technical sense). I can be sitting in general chat on two toons, but only one of them will be receiving messages posted to the channel. Or sometimes even just a subset of messages actually posted to it (using the other toon as a measure). There is no rhyme or reason to it, I can just be tabbing between toons and see the difference.
Daybreak has better metrics of how many people are actually playing, how many are afk, and how many of them are "Lee toons" just standing there waiting for Overseer to get ripe.
There tends to be a lot more spam, chatter, and drama in TLP chat channels so I think a lot more people turn those off. The Live channels are pretty quiet 99% of the time, not much reason to mess with em, although I think most people turned them all off years ago lol. Either way I do hope people get their server merges. I played another game in the same situation with very dead servers with a company who wouldn't do server merges despite how badly they were needed. I eventually gave in and paid for a server transfer to the most populated server, and it literally turned into a completely different game. Seeing people everywhere again made me fall in love with the game all over again. It's pretty much what we get to experience every time a TLP launches. And truth be told some of the people who play on those dead servers actually want to be there. They have no competition, are never bothered, never have to talk to anyone... which I personally don't see the point of but /shrug. Some people would literally rather the game be shut down than have their server merged, it's weird. And then there is the way an adult in their 30s or 40s will behave when they have to change their character name. Scary stuff. TLDR: Server merges are worth it, more games need to make effort to do them and not wait too long to do so. People will get over the issues they have with them.
IMO, instead of killing Brekt and merging it into FV they should have made Brekt have the same bonuses as FV and then offer free transfers from FV to Brekt for like 6 months, then allow free transfers between the two for a year. So that the population might have a chance to balance out, rather than the almost overcrowed version is and was or the almost empty that was Brekt.
BB has a fairly large lag pile 24x7. Rather that logging off many linger in the lag pile hoping to be buffed and ready to go for their next session. I did notice over the weekend, my wizard was kicked to character select for no apparent reason. Its as if there was some sort of timer introduced. Still, it could have been one of my hacker cats at the keyboard. Happened twice.
Merging Brekt into FV was SUCH a great idea! I can hardly wait for Thornblade/Mischief to merge in as well!
I would never play on any server but FV. I forget it has an exp bonus, man I would hate to see what exp is like without it lol. If I had time to raid a lot, I would probably choose a regular server, but if you can't, FV is a much better server. No drop is awful and way less fun. I wouldn't personally be playing, if it weren't for that server.
The Rathe is also badly in need of a server merge. Lets discuss the dead moose, we all know EQ is losing more population then it attracts. For the love of god be more proactive and lets apply logic and save the population you have left......WE NEED A SERVER MERGES!!!
FV most of the time general chat is maxed, sometime general 1 chat as well so there is a general chat 2 with some in there, not counting newplayers chat with 300 +. so for me 800 or even 900 is a tad low imo, specially a saturday.